STRAIGHT

OUTTA
Case study

COMPTON
Product context

The straight outta Compton movie as a biographical film showing the history of N.W.A. N.W.A was an American hip
hop group from Los Angeles, California. They were among the earliest and most significant popularisers and
controversial figures of the gangsta rap subgenre, and are widely considered one of the greatest and most influential
groups in the history of hip hop music. The group consisted of Eazy-E, Ice cube, Dr. Dre, DJ Yella, The D.O.C and
Arabian prince. N.W.A was active between the years 1986–1991.
 Historical context

For much of its early history, Compton was actually a quiet, mostly-white suburb that, briefly, was even home to the
Bush family. In fact, white gangs terrorized blacks and Latinos throughout the county in the '40s and '50s, with The
Spook Hunters the most famous of them. However, white flight began to take place in the 1950s after a 1948 Supreme
Court case struck down racist housing practices, and the Watts Rebellion in 1965, centred only a few miles away from
Compton, cemented the region's demographics for years to come.
The rise of the Crips and Blood gangs in the 1970s coupled with the drug trade and LAPD Chief Daryl Gates'
paramilitary approach to handling crime turned South Los Angeles and Compton into the epicentre of street violence
now immortalized by N.W.A. In 1990, Compton had experienced a staggeringly high murder rate of almost 91
homicides per 100,000
The homicide residents.
rate would peak in Los Angeles County in
1992, partly due to the Rodney King Riots, but since then
crime has waned across the county—some think due to
the end of the so-called crack epidemic along with more
effective policing.
 Cultural context

The emerging genre of extreme hip-hop in the mid-1980s was the so-called
"gangsta rap" that the group did not invent, but came to embody. It served as a
portal for mainstream America to see what was happening in the urban centres that
the Reagan administration had left behind. It was stark, brutal, and unrelenting in
their depiction of violence on the streets of South Central and Compton. "You don't
like how I'm living? Well fuck you!" rapped Ice Cube on "Gangsta Gangsta."
 Economic & Political Context

The N.W.A. biopic captures how racial politics and police violence fuelled the legendary group’s rise. It’s also a
reminder of how few mainstream rappers take on the same subjects in their music today.
In the film, Eazy-E is thrown against a cop car as officers insult his mother in front of their home, and the incident
opens him to Dre’s idea of investing his drug money into music.
The film doesn’t shy away from the seemingly unchanged nature of police brutality and the hardships of being black
in America—it’s not trying to sell the audience a comforting illusion about progress and reconciliation. But it does
believe in the ability of artists and everyday citizens to be honest and critical about their situation.
 Media ownership

Universal Pictures (also known as Universal Studios, formerly Universal Film Manufacturing Company) is an
American film studio owned by Comcast through the Universal Filmed Entertainment Group division of its wholly
owned subsidiary NBCUniversal. Founded in 1912 by Carl Laemmle, Mark Dintenfass, Charles O. Baumann, Adam
Kessel, Pat Powers, William Swanson, David Horsley, Robert H. Cochrane, and Jules Brulatour, it is the oldest surviving
film studio in the United States, the world's fifth oldest after Gaumont, Pathé, Titanus, and Nordisk Film, and the oldest
member of Hollywood's "Big Six" studios in terms of the overall film market. Its studios are located in Universal City,
California, and its corporate offices are located in New York City. Universal Pictures is a member of the Motion Picture
Association of America (MPAA), and was one of the "Little Three" majors during Hollywood's golden age.

Legendary Entertainment (also known as Legendary Pictures or simply Legendary) is an American media
company based in Burbank, California. The company was founded by Thomas Tull in 2000 and in 2005 concluded an
agreement to co-produce and co-finance films with Warner Bros. and Universal Pictures.

New Line Productions Inc., doing business as New Line Cinema, is an American film production studio of Warner Bros. It
was founded in 1967 by Robert Shaye as an independent film distribution company, later becoming a film studio. It was
 Audience

• NWA fan’s
• Those interested in the history of Gangsta
Rap
• Those interested in Biopic’s
• Those interested in racial identity
• Those interested in history of LA
• Gangsta rap fans
 Regulatory framework

BBFC: The British Board of Film Classification (previously the British Board of Film Censors), is a non-governmental
organization, founded by the film industry in 1912 and responsible for the national classification and censorship
of films exhibited at cinemas and video works (such as television programmes, trailers, adverts, public
Information/campaigning films, menus, bonus content etc.) released on physical media within the United Kingdom. It
has a statutory requirement to classify all video works released on VHS, DVD, Blu-ray (including 3D and 4K
UHD formats), and to a lesser extent, some video games under the Video Recordings Act 1984.
MPAA: The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) is an American trade association representing the six major
film studios of Hollywood. Founded in 1922 as the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA), its
original goal was to ensure the viability of the American film industry. In addition, the MPAA established guidelines for
film content which resulted in the creation of the Production Code in 1930. This code, also known as the Hays Code, was
replaced by a voluntary film rating system in 1968, which is managed by the Classification and Rating Administration
(CARA).
More recently, the MPAA has advocated for the motion picture and television industry, with the goals of promoting
effective copyright protection, reducing piracy, and expanding market access. It has long worked to curb copyright
infringement, including recent attempts to limit the sharing of copyrighted works via peer-to-peer file-sharing networks
 Regulatory framework

Straight Outta Compton was submitted with a 15 request and passed at that category, with the BBFC insight of 'strong
language, violence, sex, drug use'. The detailed BBFC insight notes that there are several uses of strong language ('f**k'
and 'motherf**ker'), during dialogue and in rap lyrics. There are also uses of discriminatory language such as 'nigger',
with some aggressive uses of the term during scenes of police brutality. When a character is diagnosed with AIDS, he
complains 'I ain't no fag'.
The BBFC passed an extended 'Director's Cut' version, which received an 18 rating. That version contains an additional 26
minutes of footage, including two stronger sex scenes. In the first, a man watches pornography on a tour bus and another
character complains about it. There is nudity, moaning and thrusting, but no strong sexual detail. The second sex scene
combines drug-taking with sexual activity, with two women smoking marijuana while having sex with a man. The
Compliance Officer who watched it for classification noted that, under the BBFC Classification Guidelines, a combination of
sexualised nudity and drug use required an 18 rating. In America the movie was rated R due to language throughout,
strong sexuality/nudity, violence, and drug use

The Parental Advisory label is a warning label first introduced by the Recording Industry Association of America in 1985
and later adopted by the British Phonographic Industry in 2011. It was placed on NWA’s album’s as a way to try and stop
the youth from listening however it just increased youth listening to their music as they would rebel against those who
Production, distribution & circulation
Sponsorship: Beat’s
by Dr. Dre

Branding: NWA,
Universal, legendary, Print: Posters
new line
Production Legendary entertainment,
new line productions
Distribution Universal pictures

Merch: NWA Music,

Marketing N/A
Audio: NWA Music
Clothing
Exhibition FX

Online: Straight outta Tv: airing the movie

somewhere and playing the trailer

Social media: straight

outta somewhere,
sharing the trailer